FIRM ASSAILED FOR EXPRESSWAY FACES PROBE ON OTHER PROJECTS

County auditors are investigating work that is being done by a controversial Sawgrass Expressway contractor on another Broward road project and a park.

The firm, Vito's Trucking and Excavating Co., is digging out a lake in Markham Park for the county's park and recreation division and finished work last month to widen and repave Sheridan Street in Hollywood for the engineering division.

The inquiry was requested by County Commissioner Howard Forman, who said he is concerned that work at Markham Park is late.

"I want to get as much homework done as I can before I start discussing such a controversial issue," Forman said.

The Sheridan Street project was included in the audit because it is the only other contract Vito's has with Broward County. Road officials say they have had no complaints about the project.

Vito's has been under fire for contracting work and environmental violations on the southernmost four miles of the Sawgrass Expressway.

At Markham Park on State Road 84 at Weston Road, the company is behind schedule after more than two years of digging, parks officials said. Vito's gives the county 60 cents a cubic yard for dirt taken from an area of the park that eventually will become a lake, west of an existing soccer field.

Work has been going on since 1983, and the county has been paid $180,000 out of the $1.5 million it expects to receive from Vito's under the arrangement.

Norman Thabit, County Commission auditor, confirmed his office is conducting an investigation but would not discuss the findings Tuesday afternoon.

"We're still in the process of reviewing the two projects. We'll have a report saying that everything is either okay or if there are any procedures or records that need to be improved," he said. That report is expected this week.

Jim Clark, planning and design superintendent for the parks division, said Vito's "isn't moving as fast as we would like him to move" at Markham Park.

The firm is required to dig up 2.5 million cubic yards of fill by November 1987 and only 300,000 yards have been removed to date.

The company, whose officers have not returned telephone calls, has had trouble selling the fill because it is of a type that cannot normally be used on many of the local, state and county road projects in the region, the parks administrators said.